, 1887-07-15
nae poRIER,s LIIrLE GAME.
Not Content with Ordinary Robbery II :
the Passengers.

Not Content with Ordinary Robbery II ?
Bunkoed the Passengers.
"There is one sleeping car porter in this
country who'll not die poor, If thrift and
smartness count for anything said a gentle
man who has just returned from a trip to
California. ''Soon after we left Omaha the
porter Of our car began to talk baseball and
10 let us all know that he was a baseball
crank. He grew rather familiar, too, consid-
ering his station, but nobody objected, for it
is always best on a cross country "Trip TO keep
on the good side of the porter. Among the
passengers were several gentlemen who take
n it'll" interest in baseball, and so, along in
the afternoon, when the porter told about the
sport some passengers had had the week be
fore, and suggested that JUS to kill time we
initiate their example, the gemmen maxim
up n baseball pool at 50 a guess, de gemmen
gueSsin' ]clnstist TO de way de fo' league games
comes out to take de pot there were seven
responses. After the money had been paid
into the hands of one who was selected to act
a stakeholder, and the subscribers had written
out their guesses and signed their names to
them, the porter humbly asked permission to
come in.
Though we all thought the chap was dis
playing considerable freshness, so long as he
had suggested the scheme, in which we had
begun tu take a good deal of interest, there
Was no one to object. So the porter put up
his So and filed his guess with the stakeholder.
The next day we got q paper at CHEYENNE.
and you can imagine how surprised we were
WHEN we discovered that only one man in the
party had named the four winners, and that
man the porter. The way the fellow grinned
when he put the $40 away in his pocket made
me feel suspicious, and so, later on, when
another pool of the same kind was proposed, l
decided to stay out and keep an eye oil the
porter. About 8 o'clock the train stopped at
II little station, and saw the porter making
n break for the telegraph office. When he
am out he had a message, which he was
reading eagerly. He sat down in the smok-
lug car and scrubbed something oil a piece of
paper, carefully consulting his message as L.,
did so, and then walked back to the sleeping
car, remarking that he'd give the gemmen a
chance to git a pat of de stuff back and de.
posted with the stakeholder a five dollar bill
and the slip of paper I'd seen him writing on
in the smoking car.
Having found out what his game was
took the stakeholder one side and said to him:
This darby is %bunkoing us. 1t is now after
o'clock. In New York and Boston it is after
3. Tn games have been played. We haven't
been thinking Of that, but this darby has.
He just received a message telling him which
clubs won, and he has named those clubs here
aud expects to take our money just as he did
yesterday
$50 the stakeholder and | took out all the
guesses, changed them all to read the same
clubs that the porter had named, and put them
back. Then we posted the other fellows
Next day when the returns were opened and
it was found that each guesser had named
tue four winners, it was worth five times
% apiece To us to see the expressions which